A Source for Patterns - Russian Sites
I have spent the afternoon surfing the web in fascination - on pages where I can't even make out the letters (my Cryllic is rusty :-) ). Why? Because of the beautiful patterns! I have been looking at a plethora of Russian sites, where there are some truly beautiful patterns available.
"If you can't read Russian," I hear you asking, "how will the patterns help you?"
Luckily for me - and other crocheters out there - schematics seem to be far, far more common than here stateside. The fine doilies show thread and hook size by a numerical size, and that "translates" just fine.
"How can I find these patterns?" you might now be thinking, "and is there anything beyond the pretty doilies?"
Well, I will say that it is the lacier patterns that have the schematics that I have found most easily - doilies, stoles, tops, baby booties, and handkerchief edgings. And you do have to have a level of comfort with schematics (and I recommend Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet).
But how to find them? Here's what I did: I went to Altavista.com's translation service (Babelfish) and typed in "Crochet". It came back with:
вязание крючком
I copied and pasted into Google, and up came a laundry list of sites and descriptions I couldn't read. But next to each one was a link titled "Translate this Page". Now, it isn't magic. It isn't a great translation. But it's genereally enough to help me a little if I need it to find patterns.
And then I just clicked around and started going "oooooo, pretty!"
You could add terms for "pattern" (картина) or "schematic" (схема) or even try other language sites (I have seen some impressive Japanese lace out there, for example).